monster truck championship
what we liked
destruction mode
25 playable circuits
customization options
What we didn’t like
Trucks are difficult to control.
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I don’t have deep knowledge when it comes to monster trucks. From what I can tell, after watching them on TV, it seems to be a matter of stepping on the gas and aiming. Thanks to this nifty little Xbox game that came to my doorstep called Monster Truck Championship, I now have a much better idea.
. . . and then, seemingly far away from you, two toilets flush simultaneously, pouring close to eight gallons of hot water into a microwave-sized supercharger that’s bolted to a washing-machine-sized block.
It works like this. You hit the accelerator. . .
Like a flintlock pistol
The resulting eight successive mortar blasts fire pistons as large as a man’s thigh and with near-diesel compression levels to bores comparable to navel artillery, transmitting crushing levels of force through femur-sized connecting rods to a crankshaft. it has to be off an ocean tugboat.
Then there’s a clutch somewhere and a bunch of rotating transmission parts and the like. Then to the drivelines, one forward, one back, before finally, what your foot asked for between 0.000001 seconds and 71 hours before is transmitted to the earth through tires the size of hot tubs.
Have you ever fired a flintlock? It’s something like this. There is a huge and seemingly endless chain of events from the moment you pull the trigger to the moment you hear and feel the “Whoop!” And, to Monster Truck Championship’s credit, the game seems to reproduce that faithfully (I was playing it on my Logitech G920 Racing Wheel).
Monster Truck Championship Features
- Online mode for up to 8 players.
- 16 customizable vehicles with over 50 options.
- 25 circuits in different cities of the United States.
- 5 types of events: Race, Time-Trial, Drag Races, Freestyle and Destruction!!
- Realistic driving and physics, including independent control of the front and rear wheels.
- Adjustment of different mechanical elements, including the engine and suspension.
- Manage your truck, sponsors and technicians to improve performance and profit.
All about money!!
The game is relatively heavy on tech, which is great. You can (actually have to) play with your truck. Improve this, modify that, etc., or you won’t win. And if you’re not earning, that also corresponds to your not earning that cold hard cash.
See, the Monster Truck Championship is not just about driving monster trucks. The key word here is Championship. After starting at a beginner level, the goal is to move up. And, like every other form of motorsports, speed equals money. So with your monster truck and set of retarded reactions and big spongy tires and mountainous levels of horsepower and torque, you’ve got to go out there and win. Take home the iron, then put the scratch back on the truck and head back to the team.
You have the opportunity to recruit team personnel along the way and deal with sponsors. It has been said that motorsports sponsorship is a shallow fetid quagmire full of vipers and ranked with the lowest life forms, and this may be true, but there is also a downside. Luckily this game is more focused on driving and having fun with your truck than dealing with sponsors.
Monster Truck Championship Gameplay
This is where the Monster Truck Championship has another technical card in its favor. They don’t have to map miles of sky, like in a flight sim, or miles and miles of runway, like in a driving sim. Then Monster Truck Championship can focus more processing power on what that hellish contraption you’re trying to control is doing.
However, there is a balance point somewhere beyond the horizon, which is difficult to master, but when you do, be careful. In Monster Truck Championship, there’s one place where impending forward momentum will meet steering angle, and it’ll happily go along with things like current body roll and weight transfer. When that happens, the Monster Truck Championship will be Hook. You. Above. and you will go down like a missile (if missiles had big tires).
And you must have the hand/eye coordination to aim (or possibly steer) your monster truck where you want it to go. It is not easy, but it is rewarding.
I could take three, sometimes three and a half corners in a row before launching in a certain direction, falling onto my side, or doing a wheelie that brought the truck to a stop at the tailgate. But to be fair, the devs say you need to do more than hit the gas if you hope to pull off cool aerial stunts or hit the ultimate in-game prize of becoming the pro league champion in the Monster Truck Finals.
Should you buy the Monster Truck Championship?
If you like things like Monster Jam, you’ll have a lot of fun playing this game. You have many options to play with the trucks, modify them and make them faster. You can also name your truck and paint it all goofy, which only adds to the fun. But best of all, with Monster Truck Championship you won’t risk committing anything stupid like committing suicide at the fairgrounds.
Monster Truck Championship is available on Amazon for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. As of this writing, it costs between $20 and $30 on Amazon depending on which gaming rig you have. It’s a cheap way to have fun if you’re looking for a game that’s a little off the beaten path.
Tony Borroz, a long-time writer for Automoblog, has worked on popular driving games as a content expert, as well as working for aerospace companies, software giants, and as a stuntman. He lives in the northeast corner of the most northwestern part of the Pacific Northwest.
